When Clay finally finished with his mana experiments it was only around noon, since he didn't see any reason to lose precious time he practiced his new methods of mana usage until around 11 the next day.
With the amount of practice Clay had put in up until this point he had become proficient at using infusion (adding mana to an object he's holding) but it was not the same for casting (moving mana outside his body) as he could only make a small flame comparable to that of a match, but he had discovered that if he drew outside mana to his casting construct it would be boosted and would be sustained for longer these boosts nearly double the strength of a construct.
When the time arrived Clay was doing his final check of supplies in his large military style backpack, but he had forgotten his toothbrush and toothpaste since he didn't know how long he'd be gone for.
After he grabbed the two stragglers and was about to walk out of the bathroom he caught a reflection of his eyes and couldn't help but to notice that there was a small vibrant speck of pink that was almost imperceptible he figured it was just a minor change so he ignored it.
With everything they might need packed checked and double checked Clay and Timber finally set out at around two in the afternoon.
When they reached the street Clay was amazed for his streets the ones of his city that used to only have some trash on it was now littered with bodies some of which were easily identifiable as human corpses but some were of creatures that shouldn't exist on earth.
As Clay and his mountain lion like cat Timber made their way through the streets both of their hearts raced but for different reasons as Timber's heart was racing because she was itching to see what her new body could do and while Clay knew instinctively almost that the key to getting stronger at a faster pace had to do with culling the monsters from existence but even with that he couldn't shake the image of the ginormous blue eyed bear he say only a few days earlier, but he shook his head clear as he took out a gleaming blade no shorter than a full eight inches. The only way for him to survive would be to be strong and to be strong his fear has to be controlled.
After walking a few blocks the duo finally spotted a group of five monsters that they could take down, they had a foul looking green skin completely devoid of hair and full of pockets of pus and small lacerations, they had a dark green eyes and ferocious and sharp looking teeth with dangerous claws to match, they each stood at around three foot tall and the fifth one was larger then the other four that goblin (name Clay had started calling them) seemed to be the leader.
As the group approached Timber started to snarl to show that she was ready to fight already and likewise Clay started to prepare too as he tightened his grip on his blade and started pulling mana from his core in order to circulate it and to infuse it with the knife in his hand with just enough mana needed to make it glow with a slight purple color.
After a while the goblins noticed clay and Timber's position when they did the stopped walking and collectively all five of them let out an ear piercing screech.
After their supposed war cry four of them rushed toward Clay and Timber while the fifth one stayed back and squealed at the others.
Two went for Clay and two went for Timber so as the first one arrived at Clays position he used his mana infused knife to slash down savagely at the goblin managing to cleave its arm off but before Clay could retaliate the goblin had used its sharp and pointy claws to slash at clays stomach, but before the goblin could make another move he. Had already sliced its head clean in half but sadly he had no time to celebrate his accomplishment as the other had arrived so the first thing Clay did was to sweep the legs out from under clays second goblin, while it was stunned Clay didn't hesitate so cut its head off with his knife.
While this was happening Timber was also dealing with her goblins but unfortunately she had to deal with them both at once.
Timber used her newly enhanced agility to quickly run behind the goblins and so she snapped her mighty jaws around the neck of the goblin closest to her, she then proceeded to fling the now dead goblin around by the neck but then the second goblin had bit her tail Timber let out a pained howl as she turned around and used her razor sharp claws To slice the goblin, the result was that the goblins in trails spewed out of itself leaving it dead within minutes.
As the larger leader goblin saw its underlings get ruthlessly massacred it decided to flee as it started to run away but it made the decision a little too late as Timber pounced on it so that Clay could put in the finishing blow sinking his blade through the head of the leader goblin until it touched the pavement beneath.
As Clay was recouping after the fight he found that having mana circulated through his body sped up his healing by a ferocious amount as all of his scratches and smaller lacerations started healing at a visual rate.
Once he had well enough recovered clay noticed that Timber was mauling the bodies of the two goblins that she killed and before long she pulled two dark green stones from their chest cavities, then she swallowed the green stones and from the ambient mana in the air clay could tell that his precious companion had just grown stronger by a notable amount.
So Clay decided to follow in timber's footsteps and so he cut open the chests of the two goblins that he killed and pulled out green stones similar to the ones in timber's goblins and with this he immediately swallowed them and as he did he could feel them dissolving on the way down only to recondense in his own core making it bigger and denser, before moving on though he also decided to take the stone from the larger goblin as he thought about how the green stones were almost definitely the goblins cores so that meant that they could also use mana potentially but that would be a problem for a different day he thought as he pulled a core from the big goblin but it was a slightly lighter color and also a little bigger and so as he swallowed this core it expanded his core the same amount as two of the regular goblin cores at this point clays core had expanded to twice the size it had been before in return boosting his power.
With the fight over both clay and Timber were both absolutely exhausted so the decided to rest for the night in the convenience store across the street from where they were.
So they went in locked the door payed down a blanked and they were both passed out before their whole body were even on the blankets.