Where Zephyr once stood was now a small figure engrossed in a bulky looking shiny black armor.

There were engravings and spikes all around the armor which made it even more menacing. There was a feeling of suppression looming over the Lion's and it got worse when a flashy magic seal started floating in the sky behind the armored figure.

This made the gravitational field around them become several times more intense and the rest of the Lion's became immobile and struggled to even lift their heads.

The figure raised it's arm and the book flipped to near the beginning of its contents where it summoned a spear that looked horrendous and emitted a fishy smell. It was the spear from the bandit they encountered on their way to Oswald and the summoning now landed in Zephyr's hand.

Zephyr rapidly flew forward and waved the spear all around as it bisected the Lion's heads from their bodies. After cutting down 14 of them, the place looked extremely gruesome. As Zephyr made his way down the weirdly spacious cave he soon encountered another surprise.

There lay a baby Lion with only a small ball of fire on its head, looking just like a newborn with its eyes closed. Just as Zephyr was ready to strike it down and eliminate everything in his way, the black book once again appeared.

It then flipped to one of its later pages, where Zephyr couldn't even look at yet as darkness flooded out and prevented him from doing so. There, another purple ray was emitted as well as a magic seal.

The magic seal made its way to the baby Lion and branded itself right at the top of its forehead and a strange purple cocoon enveloped the baby and it disappeared into the book after.

Question marks were floating out of Zephyr's head at this point but when he summoned the black book to take a look, he noticed it was closed shut with the book glowing purple.

Thinking it had something to do with the Lion inside of it, he left the matter alone and sat down to recuperate. When he tried to meditate he noticed black balls of energy leaking from the corpses and rapidly approaching him.

They went right into him and rather than feeling his stage nine power increase again, it just slowly flowed throughout his body like normal. Getting curious as to why it flowed through his body and not to his cultivation, he tried to focus the energy out of his body and away from their normal paths and a surprising result occurred.

Zephyr keeled over as he could not handle the pressure of the armor he was wearing without any assistance. It felt like mountains were on top of him, relentlessly crushing him and causing him to groan.

Hurriedly reactivating his energy helped his strength come back to him but due to the books leave of absence, he couldn't unsummon the armor.

This led him to keep expending his energy which made him have to attack more animals to keep his energy levels high. He found more habitats in this weirdly spacious cave and one of the more populated ones were the vampiric bats.

These bats were huge and blue fur balls with glaring red eyes that could trigger hallucinations to distract you while they would suck your blood.

Unfortunately, their fangs could never reach the constantly hallucinated Zephyr and when he awoke it would be absolute slaughter where he'd get his energy back.

Just like that he made his way through the cave killing many never before seen beasts in the shapes of Spiders, Gorillas, Wolves, and Scorpions until he reached what seemed to be the center of this mysterious maze like cave.

There was a clear pond in the middle that looked green and calming with aromatic scents diffusing in the atmosphere.

Seeing nothing suspicious in the vicinity, Zephyr approached the spring and checked with his armored hand by splashing the water here and there.

With every touch, it seemed as if the pool was responding to his action's and the cave started glowing green and a vortex like fluctuation happened which sucked Zephyr deep into the pond.

Another pillar of light descended, then the pond started glowing and shining resplendently and reciprocated in turn by shooting a beam of light towards the colorful sky.

The spring calmed down and after two hours, the spring turned a inky black and looked completely corrupted.

Swimming in the middle was Zephyr, exposed naked to the native resident monsters in the cave with the black book hovering over him opened. Laying on top of his chest was an adorable looking kitten that had fire burning out of its forehead, it was the mountain Lion he picked up at the beginning but the weird part was that its flame was now purple-black and looked mystic.

Zephyr on the other hand had something different happen to him as he stood up. Rather than his trademark purple aura, a green magic seal was floating behind him with his other black seal of gravity.

It made the sides of Zephyr look distinct, one dark and evil while the other holy and serene. Curious to see its effect, Zephyr activated the seal and it started glowing along with Zephyr's body.

"Weird, nothing's happening...!" As Zephyr looked around he noticed many things amiss. The black pool and the cave looked more vivid and the energy there was easily observed.

Wanting to see more of the effects Zephyr jumped out of the disgusting pool but he regretted that action seconds after.

"Ow! What!" Zephyr held his head as a massive crater was formed at the top of the cave which was around ten meters in height. The pool was moving wildly from the force exerted on it and the whole area looked disarray. All from one jump.

"Is this power mine, energized by the seal? Awesome!" Zephyr laughed madly aloud.

After collecting himself, Zephyr finally noticed his nakedness but was depressed to find nothing to cover himself with, thus he tried to rush out of the cave as fast as he could.

What used to take a while in fighting those massive spider beasts, was now a one palm impact to it's face to cause it to explode.

Another weird fact for Zephyr was that he could only barely summon the armor and the gravitational seal only when he expends all his energy or is near death. On the other hand, the green seal of rejuvenation, a name imprinted on the book, was always activated easily.

It boosted all his physical attributes and a key part of it was that it added to his healing, increasing his sustained damaging abilities.

Paired together with his already freakish physique, Zephyr was running rough shod on the poor Spirit World inhabitants of the cave.

Finally paving a road out himself after who knows how long, Zephyr once again saw the mystical sights of the spirit world and its glorious expanse.

He was also able to clothe himself roughly using the fur's of some animals just casually draped over him due to his father teaching him how to skin whenever they went hunting.

He then relaxedly made his way through the forest he entered and soon saw mountainous area right after. There were shards and boulders everywhere and the mountains scaled to the sky and Zephyr could not see the tops of any he looked at.

Not knowing where to go and where he was, Zephyr just headed in the same straight path down the rocky road on his bare feet. After what seemed forever he finally met a golem different than the beasts he encountered in the cave. This one was round and massive, about twenty meters in diameter and ten in height, it also had shards coming out in every direction and it came with both massive legs and arms.

It dwarfed every other creature he had seen by far and it radiated intense pressure just standing there. The golem finally noticed the tiny creature that was Zephyr and raised it's hand and swatted forcefully.

Seeing the attack Zephyr felt the slap of death was incoming and only hoped to defend it so he rushed to use his entire energy to summon the black armor and cover himself.

The slap still decimated him and sent him flying past the golem and he descended near a cliff while coughing up blood repeatedly.

His armor was battered and out of place and Zephyr could only helplessly watch on as the staggering beast made its way over to him.

"Darn it, a rock beast is going to k-kill me?" The realization of his incoming death sparked a change in the eight year old and something inside of him broke apart. The cracked armor slowly started glowing and when it became visible, it came together again.

However the coughing Zephyr was not in that horrendous condition again but was standing up looking just fine. There were two glowing purple lights where the helmets eyes were and Zephyr just radiated an aura of evil and madness, when Zephyr looked around at his new location he started howling like crazy.

"BAH A HAHA! Finally free again, FINALLY! There's nothing that can hold me back anymore. BAH A HAHA!" He only stopped laughing when he noticed a gargantuan hand coming his way. He dodged it barely yet another one came into contact with his back and sent him flying.

"PAIN! BAH A HAHA! How I've longed for this sensation, pity a golem but still, a good sacrifice!" Zephyr rushed forward and his hands started flowing purple as he sent them in a hammer strike to the golems attacking right arm.

It made a disastrous sound as cracks were coming from its arm but it still remained intact and sent another blow with its other hand that sent him flying once again.

"This isn't normal, that strike should have decimated that hand, and why is any of that beast's casual swings dealing so much damage!" Zephyr looked furious and went in for round three but after five more exchanges looked even more battered.

The golem finally had its entire right arm suffer from craters and cracks all over and looked like it's arm would crumble any second, its legs were submerged into the ground and did not look like it'd get out anytime soon.

However Zephyr looked completely worn out and the armor was practically gone and slowly returning back to the book. Only below the stomach was guarded with armor while Zephyr's upper body was left bare.

A better look at Zephyr showed black lines scouring his body all over while scars trailed his body and intersected just like hideous snakes.

His pupils were a deep black and his facial expression was completely malevolent and ferocious. But Zephyr calmed down and sighed while looking to the sky.

"Is a master class monster this body's limit for now? I'm too fatigued, urgh, a little rest..." The dark black aura hovering around him slowly halted and disappeared being replaced with a purple light colored one.

Then a green seal immediately flew out of his back while the tattoos faded. The wounded Zephyr was standing there with gashes all around his body, and his entire calf was blown apart and blood was pouring everywhere relentlessly from his wounds before the seal started shining. This was a deadly battle, one where both sides were gassed from.