9 First signs of civilisation!

A human and a spiritual beast calmly made their way through the lush and dense forest as they walked side by side.

The human was staggering and looked exhausted, but he kept walking without complaining.

The spiritual beast instead, was calmly observing the surroundings while leading the way.

The light of curiosity shone in its eyes as its gaze scanned the surroundings… From observing all kinds of plants and small insects to admiring the larger flying predators in the cloudless sky…

Nothing was spared as its all-consuming curiosity brought its gaze on everything without a change of expression.

Of course, they were Cyril and Marlon.

Ever since they met a few hours ago, they have been constantly walking… Aside from a few breaks to let Marlon rest and catch a breath or to eat something.

Thanks to Cyril's memories and Zephyr's archived data, they were able to recognise most fruits and berries, thus allowing them to eat without worrying about dying poisoned or suffering some undesirable side effects.

During their talks, Cyril discovered a lot of interesting things.

The most shocking of all was what Marlon called "The dark age"...

Although he didn't know the situation in the rest of the world, Cyril could already imagine what happened from the event described by Marlon and the report given by Zephyr.

The second surprise came from the news about the fall of the Rubrum kingdom… A whole kingdom with millions of citizens erased from the map… The thought alone was scary.

Luckily, most of its citizens and their greatest guardian survived…

Cyril found it weird, 'How did this kingdom fall if most of its military power has kept existing until now?'

As there wasn't anyone able to answer him nearby, he could only sigh and think about something else.

The most pleasant discovery instead was the answer to the first question that arose after his rebirth…

It looks like this is still his homeworld.

20 years passed, but compared to the thousands of years lived by Cyril, 20 years weren't much…

Their journey was relatively peaceful, but this was mostly because Cyril was able to intimidate most spirit beasts while avoiding the attention of stronger beings.

They finally discovered some traces of civilisation by the time night was falling…

What they discovered was a simple unpaved road, but there was one detail that differentiated it from ordinary roads that even common beasts could create.

It was radiating a soft and warm light.

When Marlon and Cyril stepped over this road, the light seemed to penetrate deep into their skins (and scales) to protect them from the cold of the outside world.

To an ordinary person, this would seem to be the only function of this road, but in front of an old monster like Cyril, no secret could escape from his sight.

As Cyril's eyes scanned the road, the invisible strings of runes revealed themselves one after another.

Meanwhile, as Marlon was enjoying this warm light and relaxing his sore muscles, a flood of high-speed thoughts from Cyril bombarded his mind.

<Well well well… This is quite a surprise… Such an intricated array of rune formations is used for an ordinary road… Interesting

I didn't expect those guys to implement something like this in just 20 short years…

There are many rune formations to keep the road working like "Annoying wild animals repellent", "Clean" and "Energy force field"...

But this isn't everything, there are also rune formations to keep a minimum of comfort level for travellers like "Temperature regulating light", "Air filters" and "Anti-rain shield".

And of course, there are also some hidden rune formations for militaristic purposes like "Aura scanner", "High-speed communication channel" and "Energy transfer".

Truly fascinating…>

Hearing those thoughts, Marlon's eyes turned wide open in shock as he started toward Cyril.

Soon after, his trembling thoughts echoed within Cyril's mind.

<S-Sir, are you a formation master?>

Cyril replied soon after without moving his gaze from the strings of runes <You could say so>.

At this point, Marlon was completely speechless.

Even among humans, formation masters were existences far above an ordinary commoner like himself.

The first prerequisite to becoming one eliminated 99% of humans…

Being a mage...

And even then, a mage could choose many professions, all of which were extremely noble and important to any society.

This being said, if even among humans, the inventors of rune formations, a formation master is such an unreachable existence, among non-humans such a being is no different from a legend.

Noticing Marlon's gaze that looked as if he was staring at an alien, Cyril finally realised what he just said.

<Well… What are you starting at? Let's keep moving, I want to reach Viridi before sunrise>

<...I'm coming…>

Just like this, while the purple half-moon slowly raised in front of them, the tired Marlon was forced to keep walking and torture his trembling legs

Needless to say, Cyril was ruthless, aside from the bare minimum, he didn't allow Marlon to waste time as the breaks were calculated to the seconds for minimizing the wastes of time.

Their travel continued uneventfully under the starry sky as the moon kept rising…

Just like this, before realizing it, the sun bloomed on the horizon, golden petals seemed to stretch outwards Into the vast blue, flooding the calm and cold night with its vibrant and warm light.

Finally, Marlon's eyes regained their light only after noticing Cyril who stopped walking.

Cyril was gazing at the sky as if admiring the sunrise… However, what he was observing were two invisible magic constructs floating towards their position at high speed.

Cyril merely felt like some gusts of magic winds touched his scales before bouncing back and dissipating into the air.

The two invisible magic constructs froze in the air for a few seconds before turning around and retreating.

Although invisible to the naked eye, Cyril could easily see their shape and recognise them.

They were both shaped like a disk composed of two external layers adorned by many small runes and a smaller core area which released the energy toward Cyril a few seconds prior.

As for what they are, they are observers… Just like the name implies, they are useful to gather precious information.

Less than a minute later, another observer arrived.

This one, however, was faster, larger, and the energy realised was much denser.

It seemed to be the upgraded version of the previous observers.

This time, the observer had 3 external layers inscribed with runes while there were 2 additional smaller core areas as well.

Its shape was different as well, it looked like 2 cones whose bases were sticked together…

Overlapped with those bases was situated the most important section of the observer, the disk-shaped larger core area and the 3 layers inscribed with runes.

At the tip of the 2 cones instead were positioned the smaller core areas which were used as amplifiers and supporters.

Just as it stopped, Zephyr awakened by itself and sent a stream of data into Cyril's mind.

[Warning: Incoming energy wave detected!

Estimated level: High-level mortal realm.

Note: The energy wave doesn't seem to be an attack, there is a 90% probability of it being a scan-type spell.

Zephyr's automated defence system has been triggered.

Preparations to create a high-density energy barrier around the host in progress…]

Cyril's draconic head smiled slightly as he looked directly into the core area of this new observer and issued another order to Zephyr.

'Stop creating that barrier, relocate all the available resources to create a barrier covering my spirit, let the energy wave scan the rest of my body as it pleases…'

[Orders acknowledged]

As these words echoed, the energy stored all over Cyril's body burst forth and flowed through his veins toward his spirit before condensing into a slowly rotating barrier.

The energy wave from the observer came soon after… It easily broke through the passive defences of Cyril's scales and started examining every corner of his body.

Only the area around the spirit was spared as wave after wave of foreign energy disintegrated at the impact with the energy barrier.

The invisible observer stood still for a few seconds while trying to peer into that energy barrier by sending multiple energy waves… Yet, the barrier around Cyril's spirit stood strong as not even a ripple appeared in this slowly rotating mass of energy.

Only after 1 minute did the observer give up and start retreating.

And only after turning around did Cyril notice Marlon's puzzled gaze… It looked like he didn't notice anything at all.

Under Marlon's confused gaze, Cyril merely sent him a surface thought before resuming walking toward Viridi.

<There are observers around the area, it looks like we have finally arrived at our destination>

Just like this, Marlon finally smiled slightly as he resumed walking forward only to stop smiling a second later at the thought of his grim future.