Lucas woke up to the birds singing their early songs. A clear blue sky was a welcoming sight, without any worries, Lucas could wake up and check his progress. The ground he laid on was hard and filled with cracks as if all the water had evaporated. His little experiment left a circle of pure death and decay, "Not the most secret or hidden technique, but better than nothing. We could do this again, but I can tell we would need something big and filled with life force if we want any progress with our core."
'We could just get a few humans you know? Or beast from the area, they should be filled with energy.'
'No, we aren't like them, we kill with purpose, needless slaughter doesn't give us anything but a bad reputation.'
'Like I care about reputation.'
'We could use the core from Venion, the magicules are gone, but the core itself should be useful in some manner.'
'Don't even bother, do you think we can simply absorb a core from an entire Rank above us? We don't even have the very first rune on our core and you want to absorb a complete one? Idiot!'
Lucas sighed, he needed more information, but where would he find that? A school? A new mentor? A library? All of those things could only be found in a city or town, thus he needed to move. He had Venion's core in his backpack, it looked like a small marble that had an ice blue color after washing it.
With the technique, he could probably form all the runes that were needed, but he didn't know what would happen when the circle completes. Would he go unconscious? Would he face a certain trail? Would his core overload from the energy and explode?
Part of him was too pessimistic to think nothing strange would happen. 'Being completely prepared for anything is the absolute best way to succeed in everything. Don't take random risks, I will only accept calculated risks if you're so desperate.'
But to do this he needed to travel to a populated place first, 'For now, the best option would be the Northern Kingdom, Frigus, known for their bone-freezing mountains in the north. They allow dark magic, more than the Holy Kingdom.'
'I don't think it will last long. We need to hurry up, there won't be any kind of investigation for now. Except if someone comes to deliver a letter or any kind of invitation they would notice. Let's just hope we have enough time to move.'
At first, he didn't where the north was situated, but after using the sun as a compass he swiftly figured it out and started to move. Hunting animals along the way and fishing were his main sources of nutrition. Eating grass or worms like he would do to survive wasn't necessary anymore. He wasn't the strongest out there, but he was capable enough to handle a few monsters by himself, especially if he was prepared.
Since he had food and magic for water, he didn't really worry about starvation, but he was starting to get bored after the first few hours of traveling. He started to read the books out of a mix of enjoyment and boredom, luckily the books proved themselves to be very informative and useful in his current situation.
In order to reach the next rank, he needed to form the runes of the first circle on his core, 15 in total. In order to form a rune, he needed either a big chunk of energy that could immediately form a rune or he could do it gradually. The second approach took a lot longer but was also a lot safer. With the first tactic, he would need more than enough energy to form the rune or he could get into trouble, if it was more than it wouldn't be as bad, but you still couldn't provide a demand of 10 with a 100 or your core would explode, you could try to form multiple runes, but the core had to be stabilized enough to hold those runes. In other words, he could only take it slow, even if he wanted to rush forward.
Stabilizing the core is something he could do while he was walking, so Lucas enjoyed the fact he could do multiple things at once. In order to make the core more stable, he had to circulate the magicules in the core. This would force the core to expand a bit before returning to its original state, like muscle training, this took time and effort to reach noticeable improvements. There were multiple ways to circulate the magicules in the core, but Lucas knew only one that the book provided.
The book about magical principles was extremely helpful for him, it explained how everything worked, how he could improve, and what to avoid.
'The author had to be a genius to explain even complicated things so easily. I wonder if he signed it somewhere, if he made multiple books, we would have an immediate goal.'
"Signed S.R."
'There we go, thank you S, you helped us in ways you couldn't even imagine.', curious about the strange name he wondered who made the Drain Life book. After all, that technique required darkness magic and had severe effects on the environment, so he wondered who would dare to even make a book about it.
But there wasn't a name like the author wanted to stay secretive, 'I wouldn't blame him, it's practically signing your name on a hitlist.'
Making his way to the first city or town he could find, he circulated his core whenever he possibly could. Doing it too much would give his core a "cramp" hurting him whenever he would use his core. But that didn't stop him, he kept going even if it hurt, because he could see that it had better effects when it started to hurt.
The pain wasn't crippling but it certainly was annoying. But even that wasn't enough for Lucas, he wanted more, his body was already suffering from his desire, yet it couldn't satisfy it. His mind wasn't occupied with something, he could talk to himself, but that would be boring, and it didn't take too long before all his books were read.
Yet there wasn't a single practice on how to improve his mental sphere in the book about magical principles, which mostly focused on the use of magicules and their explanation. The mind sphere was nowhere to be found, so he had to try to create his own training method. At first, he started to think hard about a lot of different things, going as deep as possible into a certain subject to try and strain his mind.
That didn't give him any kind of result, his mental sphere was a lot stronger than a normal mind, so mental exhaustion was harder to reach except if he used his willpower for something, but that wasn't training. That merely sucked the energy out of it, it didn't improve anything.
Then it occurred to him, 'What if we both think of things at the same time as we did with the memories back when we encountered the Aruna Bat?', still with the mindset of before, he wanted to try his previous exercise but with two subjects at the same time.
That didn't work in the slightest, his mind became fuzzy and he started to get a headache. But that sign of pain was something good for Lucas, he believed that through the pain you could grow, so he kept going. Every time his mind was cleared he made it fuzzy again, he wanted to get a headache, because he could see that he could hold on a little longer or the headache wasn't as bad after a while. Nothing changed visually, the sphere stayed the same, but he could focus longer on two subjects at the same time, so it was good enough.
During his travel he kept forcing himself to train to be occupied with something, his body and mind were starting to get really exhausted from all the stress put on them. Even a good night's rest didn't fix anything, but that didn't stop Lucas, he simply kept going, kept moving forward.
Eventually, he could see signs of human civilization in the distance.