The staircase felt like it went on forever. It just kept on going deeper and deeper down into the depths of the earth. It genuinely felt like the whole staircase was infinitely long and had no actual end to it. Thankfully, despite the pitch darkness that the stairs appeared to be covered by from the top, they were not actually completely in the dark, instead, they were lit up by multiple dim torches, which burnt with a rather mesmerising black flame.

I just kept on carefully slithering down the stairs, making sure to keep aware of where I was slithering. These stairs, just like the ruins on the surface, looked quite old and definitely untouched by anyone in years - perhaps even longer. They weren't covered in vines or moss, but they were cracked and appeared to have been through some years of disasters.

While making my way down, a thought came to my mind.

'What even is at the bottom of this?'

I thought. While I could take a few guesses onto what could be at the bottom, solely based on the look of the ruins on top, mainly the two dragon statues beside the entrance, I also contemplated the possibility that those statues didn't actually possess any meaning and were just decoration.

'Perhaps these ruins were some kind of tomb?'

I thought.

Eventually I reached the end of the staircase. The stairs had led me down to a cylinder shaped 'room' which only had two things in it - the staircase I had just gotten off of and a tunnel entrance, which led inside somewhere deep.

'More and more, I'm starting to believe that this actually is some kind of ancient tomb.'

I thought before beginning to move to the tunnel entrance. The entrance to the tunnel seemed to have a frame - a frame that one may compare to a door frame in my old life. This frame was from what looked like bricks or stone with fancy patterns covering the entire thing.

At the top of the frame, seemingly, was a precious gem, embedded in the stone frame. The gem was a deep violet colour — with a very insanely beautiful swirl like pattern inside of it.

After examining the gem in the frame for a bit more, I slithered on further into the hall, entering the pitch black darkness that was inside it, which was a major 180 when comparing to it to the way that the staircase, while still kind of dark for the most part, had some dim lighting from black flames upon torch pedestals.

The tunnel was completely straight and seemed to show signs of time getting to it - cracks in the walls and ground, broken pieces of stone and rubble everywhere, making the whole place look a lot more like actual ruins.

I navigated the tunnel for a small while, encountering no other life form during my path. While that was rather expected, at the same time, part of me sort of expected this tomb to be overrun by things such as rats, insects and other small crawlies that were usually present in these kinds of areas. There weren't even any spiders inside here.

Then, as I moved through the hall at my own pace, I eventually bumped my head into an obstacle that was dead in my path.

'Huh?'

Looking up at what I had bumped into, I saw a massive gate, which laid before me. The gates were different to the walls of the tunnel as they were made from what looked like pure metal or something, with swirling patterns and carvings of what appeared to be a dragon with six wings all over them.

Another thing to note, was that there was a pair of what appeared to be rubies, being used as eyes for the dragon carving in the doors, making for a rather eerie sight — as the eyes appeared to be staring straight down at me, even if they were just part of a carving on some gates.

The gates were closed and most definitely far too heavy for me to push open. However, the curiosity of what could be potentially on the other side of them was greatly present within me, so I was looking around for any potential cracks or something, through which I could slither to the other side.

At first, I didn't find anything of that sort, however eventually I spotted what seemed to be a small 'tunnel' in the shadows, on the left side of the gates.

Quickly moving over to it, I looked inside it, to see where it led to. To my luck, the small tunnel in the wall curved around the gates and led to the other side of them.

I shed a slight sweat, a bit hesitant to actually go through with my idea of getting to the other side of the gates. While yes, I was curious on what the hell was on the other side of them, at the same time, I was rather terrified of it potentially being something morbid or very disturbing — such as a bunch of corpses or something. Eventually, after letting a small exhale and shaking my head, I slid inside the small tunnel.

Once on the other side of the gates, I was met with quite a different scenery. Instead of a tunnel with stone brick walls, it was a cave-like landscape, with beautiful crystals of all sorts of colours plastered all across the cave walls and ceiling.

It was also quite spacious - having so much room inside of it that you could probably fit quite a lot of people inside of here if you ever needed a place to use as a bunker.

'Well...I am here. Now I guess it's time to see what's inside here.'

I thought before gulping - still being very nervous and hesitant about actually going on and exploring this whole place.

I began to move deeper into the cave landscape, slightly marvelling at the absolutely beautiful scenery around me. The crystals were in all sorts of different colours — red, blue, orange, green - honestly I could keep going. However, they all also had a strange black glow or aura around them, making their colour a bit washed out and dim.

I continued to move forward for a while longer, before coming across a bending and winding path, which led up to a 'platform' in the room. Looking a bit more closely, I could see that there was something on said platform - something massive. And it seemingly was expressing some kind of aura or something from it... Almost like flames or something surrounded it. This was definitely a very eerie and I would say even frightening sight, making me a bit hesitant about actually going towards it.

However, since I was so deep inside here now and my curiosity was rising, I decided to move up only the bending path.

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The path was a lot more narrow than the one I had been on so far - I'd say that on a rough guess, it seemed to be around half of the width. It also was rather thin and completely unsupported by pillars of any kind, making it look like it was straight up floating.

Once on the path, I began to slither up it, my curiosity rising, while also my fear beginning to show itself. I don't know why, but the closer I got to the platform where it looked like something was on it, the more the feeling of fear inside of me grew, making me more and more hesitant of actually moving to the very top and more considerate of the idea of just turning around and going back.

However, my body just kept moving forward up the bending and winding path — and before I knew it, I was at the top of it, reaching the platform.

Instantly as soon as I reached the platform, I felt a slight rumble, followed by what sounded like a rather distorted and deep groan. I almost immediately looked up in front of me, before slithering back a bit. On top of the platform, right in front of me was a giant creature, which towered over me with deep red eyes staring down at me, as a pitch black aura covered its appearance, making it a lot more like a silhouette.

The creature seemingly noticed me a moment later, looking more down at me, before tilting its head to the side.

"A Serpent? Down here?"

The beast suddenly spoke, his voice deep, distorted and shaking the whole entire room from its ripple.

The creature's voice echoed through the cave, as it seemingly crossed a pair of arms it had, however due to the aura surrounding it, it was a bit hard to tell if that is really what had happened.

"Interesting..."

The Creature stated again, narrowing its gaze onto me before the aura around it faded, revealing more of its actual body. The creature was very obviously a dragon — its body resembling a lot of the western type dragons that I knew of. It had pitch black scales, with a purple tint to them, which sort of like a gradient faded from the black colour into the purple one, while also having this lighter purple glow from underneath them.

The scales also had a striking resemblance to samurai armour, being very similar to it. The dragon had a rather short neck, with a rather large head which had long white crystals going out of it, going upwards and forming a sort of V shape on its head, but upside down — as the crystal horns went over its eyes as eyebrows.

The dragon also had a pair of six large wings, as well as rather short arms and large legs, which were curved in a way that made it look like the dragon was sitting down on the ground. Lastly, were the dragons eyes — which yes, were deep red, however also had a dark purple pupil, that has a pair of small pitch black dots in the dead centre of them.

Overall, the dragon's appearance was very different from what I was familiar with — so much so that I began to wonder whether I was just dreaming or not, since I don't think that a real living dragon would look the way it did.

The Dragon looked at me with seemingly confusion in its eyes, before leaning down towards me, its head reaching down to my level — with our nuzzles basically touching.

"Hm..... You're quite an interesting fellow. You look like a Serpent, but you aren't entirely one."

The Dragon stated, before leaning back up. I looked at it a bit confused, shedding a slight sweat again. Was the dragon able to tell that I was a human - or at least, was once a human? Is that it? If so, then perhaps...

Before I could finish my way of thought, the dragon suddenly let out a loud groan before exhaling - the whole cave shaking violently from its voice alone. Afterwards, it looked down at me again.

"You probably don't know or actually, cannot speak considering who you are. So, before we move on, allow me to grant you the ability of speech."

The Dragon stated, its voice rippling. I wasn't quite sure what it meant by its statement just now, however before I knew what was happening, the dragon suddenly touched my head with its right claws finger, before closing his eyes. After a moment or two, he exhaled — an aura engulfing him, before flowing over his body and onto me, sinking into my body, causing a warm and rather fuzzy feeling inside of me.

Skill granted.

Active Skill [Speech] acquired.

..Skill? What was a 'skill'...?

It's that voice again as well.... Did this Dragon just give me power or something?

The Dragon removed its claw from my head, before leaning back again and looking down at me with its eyes again.

"There — now you should be able to converse with me in spoken words, more specifically, the Primal Language."

"Primal language...?"

I let loose on accident, speaking out before flipping my tail in front of my mouth. The dragon seemingly smirked to himself, before crossing its arms and clicking its tongue lightly.

I just managed to speak — something I couldn't do this whole time up until now.... This Dragon, did it just give me the ability to speak? Okay.... Now I know that there was a high chance of me dreaming right now and none of this being real — No, it was too confusing to be real.

"Now that you can speak, allow me to ask — You aren't a normal serpent, correct?"

The Dragon asked, tilting his head slightly to the right. I remained silent for a bit, before moving my tail off of my mouth and coiling up my body, before looking up at the dragon, with a rather nervous yet also calm expression.

"Yeah... I am not."

"I had a feeling."

The Dragon stated, before looking up a bit, groaning loudly once more and then looking back down at me, sighing heavily, before looking dead straight at me with its deep red eyes.

"Allow me to guess — a reincarnated individual from a different world?"

I was a bit taken back by this sudden statement, however it did not make that fact obvious. Instead, I gulped lightly and nodded a bit hesitantly.

"Indeed... But — how did you know?"

I asked, before shaking my head and looking down.

"Or rather... How did you figure out so quickly?"

I corrected my question, turning my gaze up at the dragon afterwards. The Dragon remained silent for a bit, before letting out a heavy exhale and leaning back again — crossing its arms again.

"The shape of your soul — It's not that of a serpent, but a human instead."

The Dragon pointed out, before letting out a small amount of pitch black smoke from its nostrils before gargling its throat and coughing afterwards.

"Apologies - I've been in here for so long that I have begun to lose my connection to the abyss."

The Dragon apologised. I still wasn't very sure on what to say to the dragon nor on what to really do in this situation. I wasn't even sure whether this was real or not at this point and could feel my head lightly spinning.

Too much information was being presented to me too fast. This dragon has been here for a long time, so long, that it had begun losing its connection to something? I am a bit confused and lost here right now. The Dragon remained silent for another bit longer before exhaling and looking down at me again.

"Alright — Moving along, I suppose I should ask for your name, reincarnated one. What is it?"

The Dragon asked, sharpening its gaze.

"Or rather — what was it?"

It asked. I once again felt hesitant to say anything, and even went over the idea of saying that I had no name for some reason, however after a moment or two, I exhaled.

"Komeno Riyo. My name is... Was Komeno Riyo."

I replied, closing my eyes lightly, before looking down at the ground with a slightly saddened expression. The Dragon looked at me with a more curious gaze, before looking to the side for a second and then back at me.

"Alright — it is my pleasure to meet you Komeno Riyo."

The Dragon stated, before lifting his right arm up to his chest and placing his left one down by his side.

"I am known as Arabor the Abyss, and the location you have found yourself inside of, is my tomb."