Beasts always had a huge advantage. Even though it had only been 370 years since this iteration was reset, there were actually already Elevated Beasts, and if the situation remained the same, it was likely that they’d go from Third Elevated to the Mythical Realm in just a few decades.

It could only be said that the human population was lucky that they were stuck in such a perpetual state of cultivation, or else it was likely that there wouldn’t be a single human power left in existence. In fact, if Ryker was correct, even the jailers likely didn’t expect for this to happen.

Ryker had read about several such “accidents” in the past, where tweaks to the Dao caused unforeseen changes that resulted in the experiment being forced to end early. This would definitely fall into that category.

The moment the Earth Flame of this world could no longer power these two creature’s breath, they would wake up from this perpetual state of cultivation and conquer the world.

According to Ryker’s calculations, even the strongest beasts should have only been at the Third Ascended level. Even if beasts had an advantage, it shouldn’t be that exaggerated. They still needed time to gather up experience that could be passed down through their bloodlines. 370 years certainly wasn’t enough for that.

However, the oddities in the Dao allowed this peculiar balance of ice and fire to form, greatly benefiting the progression of both beasts.

‘If things continue like this, everything in this world will be wiped out in 20 years at most. If it’s fast, it’ll be 10 years, if it’s slow, 30…’

The shocking part about these beasts was that Ryker had already noticed that they weren’t flesh and blood.

In the Spirit Beast animalia kingdom, there were several Types, from Fire to Lightning, to Variant Beasts that combined two elements or simply had affinity for both…

Among these, there were Spirit Types.

Jaana’s first contract was a Variant Beast of the Spirit and Water Type, the very same floating seahorse that Ryker had had so many dreams about. It could also be said that Ryker’s Silver Mirror was a Spirit Type.

The Spirit Type was one that encompassed many things. It was much like the energy type, it could fall into many categories. Ryker’s sealing was considered to be a Spirit Type ability, as was the reconnaissance ability of the Silver Mirror. It was a truly large umbrella of things.

But when the Spirit Type was applied to a beast category, it meant something very special. This was a beast that wasn’t just flesh and blood, they were a force of nature, a product of either live birth and nature, and in the rarest instances…

A product of nature itself.

Jaana’s seahorse was a Variant Type of Spirit and Water because it was a product of live beast and a force of nature.

However, these creatures here wouldn’t be known as Variants. They would be known as an Ice Spirit Beast and a Fire Spirit Beast. It was a completely different thing.

Because if Ryker was correct, these creatures didn’t have parents, nor were they born by conventional means. They were forces of nature to their very core.

These beasts, regardless of their Circle Talent, would always have an affinity for their particular element that went beyond what their talent would suggest.

Depending on the phenomena they were born from, an Elemental Spirit Beast could have anywhere from one degree to three degrees of greater affinity. Meaning, a 4th Circle Talent Elemental Spirit Beast born from a shocking natural phenomena could display the abilities of a 7th Circle Talent Spirit Beast!

What was the point in the distinction, then?

Ryker had wondered this as well, and it ultimately came down to the drawbacks.

An Elemental Spirit Beast of poorer talent would not only take longer to progress, they would have less Spirit Energy overall.

However, this was still the surface level. Elemental Spirit Beasts were notoriously difficult to raise. Beyond the Enlightenment Realms, if the talent was too weak, they would run into an impossible roadblock, one that couldn’t be passed with no number of resources or training.

If this creature was below the 4th Enlightenment Realm, it would never enter the Ascension Realm. If it was below the 7th Enlightenment Realm, it would never enter the God Realm.

It was hard to tell, but Ryker was fairly certain that both of these beasts were 6th Circle Talents. They would never be able to enter the God Realm.

However, the natural phenomena that they were born from was exceptional. Ryker had never seen it described even in literature.

It was hard to pin something that he didn’t quite fully understand, but Ryker wouldn’t be surprised if they could display the affinity of beasts that were at least in the 8th Circle, if not the 9th.

Ryker took a breath and closed his eyes. He finished analyzing the entire situation and had fully calmed down.

This entire region was barren because no other beasts dared to come close. At the same time, those two Spirit Types down there were completely immersed in cultivation. It could be said that they were in a half-sleep state and wouldn’t wake up anytime soon unless he were to disturb them.

He was safe here.

But the problem was that wasn’t what he wanted. He needed the Earth Flame that was down below.

Unfortunately, even though he knew that using a bit of the Earth Flame wouldn’t ruin their cultivation, these beasts almost certainly didn’t.

The drawback of beasts born from natural phenomena was that their intelligence was pitifully low compared to beasts of the same level. By now, Phoenix could already think and rationalize things about as well as humans. Those beasts down below certainly could not.

And, even if they could, Ryker doubted it would make much of a difference. Beasts didn’t take kindly to humans in general and they wouldn’t just let him take advantage of their resources just because it cost them nothing.

‘… If I use Fire Phoenix’s Inductive Touch talent, I can give off the same signatures as the fire down there. With their low intelligence, they won’t be able to tell the difference.’

Ryker had already calmed down after he came up with a plan.

Using Inductive Touch when his body wasn’t nearly as robust as Phoenix’s would be nigh impossible normally. The density of fire energy would char him from the inside out.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

However, he had a plan for that.

He took out another meatball and put it into his mouth. After some hesitation, he took out two more.

Even without seeing himself, he knew he looked ridiculous. The meatballs were quite large to begin with, and he had just stuffed three into his mouth before forcing his lips to close over them.

He couldn’t swallow them now or else that would defeat the purpose.

‘I’ll have to change the formula to make it more slow-acting and slow-dissolving in the future so I don’t end u in such a stupid situation again.’

When he had Inductive Touch going, he couldn’t be grabbing meatballs or else he would incinerate them. Plus, he was going down into a pit of fire. It wasn’t the best place to be taking sensitive items into.

He wouldn’t even be taking his clothes with him. Nothing but the raw materials from the prison would be coming.

Ryker stripped down naked. After tossing all of his stuff into the prison, he buried it into the ground and then took a deep breath.

Then, he began to circulate Inductive Touch.

The pain was immediate. The high concentration of Fire Type Spirit Energy on his skin made him glow a reddish gold color, but the smell of charred meat quickly wafted into the air.

Ryker wanted to clinch his teeth, but he couldn’t even do that with the meatballs in his mouth.

Taking another breath, he began to slowly slide down the fire side of the volcano. He had been forced to leave the Silver Mirror behind, so his senses were far more limited than usual. For the first time, he actually missed the annoying little thing. If not for it, he wouldn’t have been in this situation to begin with, but it had clearly helped him in its own small ways.

Plus, if he never came here, he would never know about the prison and he would live out a short, glorious life as the frog at the bottom of a vast well.

‘No movements, that’s good.’

The fire fox didn’t react to Ryker’s presence at all. Ryker had perfectly matched the resonance of the flames below and in its senses, it probably thought he was a stream of magma falling down the wall. Plus, it was in a half sleep state anyway, it wasn’t paying much attention.

‘Well, it looks like a fox, but I doubt it is one… I wonder why it took the shape of one. Both of them took this shape…’

Ryker’s gaze flashed, remembering the white fox Mariah he had seen during his crash landing. Was it a coincidence?

Ryker touched down onto the surface of the lava. It was much more viscous than water, making it even easier to walk on. But it wasn’t this he was worried about.

The heat…

Using Inductive Touch already made him feel like he was being seared, but this…

A small chunk of meatball was swallowed down his throat and Ryker began to use his Time Type Spirit Energy to heal himself. Then, he began to sink into the lava, slowly pushing it aside.

He stayed as far away from the beast as he could and began to mimic the flow of the lava.

There was a nice and slow spiral pattern that continued downward. Instead of going straight down, the fastest route, he followed this current, letting it carry him.

‘This flow should be caused by the balance of cold and hot… but for it to be descended despite being a dense heat, it probably means that there’s something even hotter below.’

He swallowed another chunk of meatball, trying to distract himself from the pain.

In his left hand, he clutched a thick pole of materials. Even after all of this, it showed no signs of melting at all, but Ryker had already expected this. If it was so easy, he wouldn’t need to go so far in the first place.

It took many hours, but Ryker managed to descend beyond the two Spirit Beasts. He must have traveled down several kilometers by now, and he was only going deeper.

To his surprise, though, the temperature wasn’t reacting the way that he thought it should. It was growing cooler by the moment.

Everything he knew about the world dictated that this should be impossible, but nothing here seemed to be behaving properly to begin with.

At the same time, the energy around here was so dense that he couldn’t see very far even with [Soul Ripple]. He also didn’t dare push it too hard for fear of disrupting the Elemental Spirit Beasts.

‘I’m going to run out of Spirit Energy at this rate,’ Ryker smiled bitterly.

He had taken the cautious route, but it was really costing him.

Luckily, because of the dense Fire Spirit Energy around, and the nature of Inductive Touch, he could take from the atmosphere instead of pulling from his own stores. This was why he had been able to last hours.

But even so, there was a limit to this, and even his own large reserves were running thin.

‘Hm?’

Ryker’s brows trembled as he suddenly fell though open air. He was so shocked that he didn’t know how to react for a moment and barely managed his Divined Chains to seal the air around him, locking him in place before he fell to whatever ghastly danger was waiting below.

But when he actually saw the scene, he was a bit too stunned to react.

Now that he could see clearly, he realized he was enveloped by a dome of violet. Somehow, a vacuum had been formed right in the middle of the volcano.

If he dismissed Inductive Touch right now, it would feel like spring, he was almost certain. It was a perfect fusion of Fire and Water, and it was precisely that that drenched Ryker in a cold sweat.

Nature had a funny way of doing things. The more beautiful, the more likely it was to be dangerous.

The most dangerous place to be in a waterfall was in the calmest place, the location where all currents met and canceled out… because that was the one place you would have to fight all currents to get out of.

All of Ryker’s senses told him that everything was fine, but his mind was telling him that he was likely facing the greatest danger of his life right this very moment.

If he wasn’t cautious, he would lose his life.

He scanned the region with a lightning-like gaze and at the center of it all he found an orb of violet light and he realized exactly why he was so correct.

The temperature had returned to a manageable level, but that didn’t mean that the energy that resulted from it was nearly so mellow.

What did it mean to fuse water and fire? He didn’t even have a concept for it in his mind.

In practice, you would usually end up with steam… but was that really combining the two?

Steam was just another form of water much like the ice above was. That wasn’t combining the two elements, that was changing their forms, dousing the flames on one hand and heating up the water on the other.

But this was different.

It was a near element entirely, one that Ryker didn’t understand the properties of, but was aware enough to understand that a simple casual touch from it, without caution, could end his life.

That orb of light was no longer just fire or water, it was chaos in the truest sense. It broke the laws of the world by fusing two opposite sides of a wide spectrum together.

This was probably the only iteration of this Element in all of existence.

It was formless, seemingly gentle as flowing water, and carrying a great deal of energy.

But if it touched something…

Ryker exhaled another breath. This endeavor was far more dangerous than he thought it was going to be. Somehow, he ended up facing off against something worse than a pair of Elevated Beasts, what were the odds?

‘So long as I don’t interact with that ball of light, I should be fine, but…’

Ryker looked down at himself and found that his Inductive Touch had fizzled out. It wasn’t just that, but the Divined Chains he had used to seal the air around himself and mimic flight were corroding as well.

As expected, the reason why there was a vacuum of space around here was because of that ball of light. Nothing could get close because everything was shredded apart. In fact, it seemed energy was even more vulnerable than other things.

‘Have to act fast.’

BADDUM.

Ryker was about to move on and try to dive even further, getting out of the range of the ball of violet light when his eyes widened.

‘What?!’

His gaze snapped back toward the ball of light and a realization dawned on him.

‘Another Elemental Spirit Beast!’

However, this one wasn’t fully formed yet.

Ryker had the same thought immediately. He hadn’t contracted even a single beast since Phoenix. He refused to take on anything below the 8th Circle as it would be a waste of his talents. He had the impulse to immediately act on this after finally finding a beast that interested him.

The problem was that he had no idea what Circle Talent his beast had. It hadn’t even been born yet, and Contracting it now would be like Contracting a beast egg. It wasn’t impossible to do so, but it was also like gambling.

If the beast was beneath the 4th Circle, it would never be able to leave the Enlightenment Realm.

Even if it was at the 6th Circle, it would never be able to reach the God Realm.

And even further than that, was the God Realm really the end? Ryker had always thought of it that way, but with everything he had learned recently, wouldn’t those people look at what they called the God Realm and think of it like a joke?

In that case, was there any Elemental Spirit Beast that could reach the top? Or were they all doomed to one day hit a bottleneck they couldn’t surpass?

Ryker’s gaze narrowed.

Being cautious was his moniker, it was something to live by and it would save his life many times into the future just like it had in the past.

But caution alone wasn’t enough to reach the pinnacle.

Without hesitation, Ryker triggered the contracting process for the third time in his life.