The descent was a journey through layers of hell.
When Dreleon leaped into the river, the surface tension felt like hitting a wall of liquid lead.
The upper layers were thick with heavy toxins—oily, black sludge that clung to his skeletal fur and burned his skin with acidic hunger.
But Dreleon didn't struggle.
He let the weight of his reinforced lion bones act as an anchor, dragging him deeper into the dark.
And before diving he has already pocketed most air in his lungs.
As the light of the swamp faded above, the physics of the abyss began to change.
The immense pressure of the millions of gallons of water above started to act as a natural mountain, pressing him deeper.
The heavy, chemical poisons were too dense to penetrate the high-pressure zones near the riverbed, trapped in the mid-currents like a ceiling of oil.
Down here, at the very root of the world, a hidden spring of ancient, subterranean water pushed upward.
It was icy, crystal clear, and—most importantly—pure.
The moment Dreleon's body hit the pure zone, he opened his eyes.
The lifelessness was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp spark of logic.
He felt the static in his brain—the lingering fog of the memory he remembered from his childhood training days about poisonous environment and water's nature.
It was common knowledge in the human world according to instructors but here in the jungle kingdom only exceptional animals get to read.
He tried to reach for his spatial power.
For two years, it had felt like a rusted gear, jammed by the formation's interference.
But here, shielded by the high-pressure pure water, the rust broke.
With a mental roar, Dreleon forced his spatial energy outward.
The space around him groaned and warped, pushing the water back until a perfect, one-meter radius sphere of dry air stabilized around him.
He was in a bubble of silence at the bottom of a poisonous world.
With a thought, he reached into his soul.
A faint shimmer of gold light appeared in his hand, and the Ancient Wood Sword materialized.
Its surface felt warm, a stark contrast to the freezing water outside his bubble.
"I don't know if this will work," Dreleon whispered. His voice was no longer a raspy rattle; it carried the clarity of a bell. "But I've stayed in the swamp long enough. Let's try."
He stood in the center of his small air-dome and swung.
One.
The wooden sword cut through the pressurized air.
Two.
The momentum began to hum.
Three.
Dreleon's movements slowly became a blur.
He wasn't just swinging a weapon; he was building a centrifugal force.
It was also a lesson learnt in childhood training, with cruelty.
He realized now that the Snake had been testing his perception.
The poison was a distraction—a skin over the real challenge.
The true formation was the river itself, a natural cage held together by the weight of the toxins.
"That devious snake said to destroy this formation," Dreleon thought, a faint, dangerous smile playing on his lips. "But she didn't say the formation was the swamp.
The pure water at the bottom... it's the heart. The only shortcoming of this formation, but it's also the battery.
If I break the heart, the swamp dies, as the pure water will replace the toxin."
He began to use his Spatial Telekinesis, not to push the water, but to capture the kinetic energy of his sword swings.
He compressed the air and the momentum into a tiny, vibrating point at the tip of his blade.
The pressure inside the bubble became immense, the air glowing with a violent, white light.
"You won't go back on your words, Snake," he muttered. "Or I'll make sure the King hears how you broke the promise made to someone possessing royal bloodline."
He reached the breaking point.
The sword was vibrating so fast it seemed to vanish.
BOOM!
Dreleon released the compressed space.
The resulting blast created a booming sound; with a physical eruption.
The entire river, millions of tons of poisonous sludge and pure water, was punched upward by the spatial vacuum.
From the surface, it looked like a colossal liquid dragon waking from a thousand-year slumber, leaping toward the dark canopy of the trees.
The water hit the ceiling of the world and collapsed.
SPLASH!
The shockwave threw Dreleon through the air, and he landed roughly on the riverbank, drenched and shivering, but alive.
He coughed up a final bit of black bile and looked up.
The Green Lion was there, standing only a few feet away.
But as the mist from the water-blast settled, the intruder began to flicker like a dying candle.
Its emerald eyes paled, and its massive, domineering frame began to dissolve into wisps of green vapor.
"As I expected," Dreleon said, his voice trembling—with the sheer joy of being right.
"You were nothing but an illusion of the formation. A mirror of what I feared I wasn't.
That's why there was no roar. A lion without a roar is just a ghost."
He threw his head back and laughed.
It wasn't the jagged, broken laughter of the mad lion king.
It was the deep, resonant laugh of a boy who had looked into the abyss and found the exit.
He didn't even know why he was so happy—perhaps it was the feeling of his memories returning, or the feeling of the Royal Blood finally circulating without the sting of insects.
He stood up, his skeletal frame looking less like a victim and more like a forged blade.
Dreleon had returned. And the Snake was going to have a lot to pass on.