"Today will be my last day at this village," Leon announced as soon as he returned to his temporary house and Sarah closed the doors.
"Huh?" the girl uttered as she jumped on the spot. Her eyes went wide when she turned around and stared at Leon's figure.
Leon, on the other hand, paid very little heed to the girl's surprise.
She was a nice companion and a great source of information for how little he knew her. Yet, contrary to how more childish people would act in his place, he has no wish to stay prolong their relationship any longer than necessary.
'In this world, where I know nothing about anything, it's better to travel solo,' he thought. He already made the choice when it came to the girl and the village at large. And yet, he was stuck rationalizing it to himself.
"I..." Sarah finally managed to produce a single sound... Only for her knees to give up making her body slump to the ground. "I understand," she then said in a feeble voice, lowering her face while sitting across the entire length of the house away from the bloodmancer.
"And for now, I don't wish to be disturbed," Leon then added, sitting cross-legged on the bed before closing his eyes and turning silent.
'The basic method of refining mana works. That means, the general principle stays the same,' he thought, eager to make the most of the time he had left in this place to further his research into the only power that could allow him to change his status from a semi-suicide bomber to someone who could actually hold up his own in a fight.
'All the tactics regarding urban warfare, countering the firepower, counterbattery fire... They are all meaningless in this world, he thought, taking a deep breath as he analyzed his choices. 'It's also way too late for me to pick up a sword and learn how to properly use it,' he admitted before himself, tightening his hands into fists.
The skill that Leon displayed during the raid wasn't swordsmanship. It was just an evolved version of close-quarter combat that involved any and everything that one could get their hands on. Be it a chair, a lamp, or even a stray can that was unlucky enough to wander close enough to the fight, it was of no difference to Leon.
And yet, as he realized during the confrontation with the soldier, if he were to be pitted against a proper swordsman, then without his guns, his subordinates, and with no wish to expose his only triumph card that was bloodmancy... Leon would be completely and utterly powerless.
'And that leaves me with only mana to play around with,' he thought, using all the resolve that he built up during the analysis of his situation to storm the gates of his nearly forgotten knowledge before putting all the loot from his mental library into use.
This time, Leon paid no heed to Sarah's presence in the room. And just like before, he started forming tiny cubicles made out of a single set of barriers each before pushing the air within to the limits of how quickly it could rotate.
'The cores are already forming,' he then thought, once the tiny particles of inactive mana present in the air were left in the middle of the countless cyclones. This time, however, instead of a single point that would slightly reflect the light and thus go practically unnoticed by any untrained eye, Leon surrounded himself with hundreds of them.
Yet, this wasn't anywhere near enough for Leon to proceed. And so, he continued to use up his extremely precious energy to build up more and more of the cores, all the way to the point where hundreds of them turned into thousands and then tens of thousands.
Leon opened up his eyes.
He reached the limit of how many tiny barriers he could hold up all at once. And as if it wasn't enough, he still had to make twice as many of them to keep those fragile cores of inactive mana from merging back into the air as soon as the outer barriers would be dissolved.
"Shall we take a walk?" Leon spoke up, startling the girl who by now was too stunned and amazed by the show of light displayed all around the bloodmancer to even remember about her own existence.
"Ah...? Oh, sure," Sarah replied absentmindedly, staring at the space around Leon that turned into something similar to a night sky littered with stars. She then stood up and reached out for the doors. "Huh?" the girl then shook her head and took a peek outside, only to turn her head back and throw an uncertain look towards the bloodmancer. "But it's already dark outside..." she muttered.
'Hmm?' Leon was taken aback by the revelation. Stuck in the first step of rapid refinement he didn't even notice when at least several hours have passed. 'But it's actually a good thing,' he then realized once he allowed a tiny portion of his focus to keep up his entire persona and form an answer.
"Lead me outside," Leon then ordered, perfectly aware how in his current state he wasn't even good to walk around on his own.
And so, the girl moved towards the bed before slowly moving Leon's legs over its edge. She then pulled his body up, making him stand on his own two legs. And then, just like she was ordered, she grabbed Leon's arm and led him outside of the shed only to pull him away from all the buildings of the village.
"There is no one around," Sarah soon reported, unsure whether she should keep her eyes on Leon's face lit up by the thousands of tiny stars dancing around him or at the show of lights itself.
"Good," Leon muttered in response.
And then, he brought all of the stormy cubicles together, turning them into one, greater and more concise shape.
"You better brace yourself," the bloodmancer then warned, right as he started to drop the barriers starting from the middle of the shape he created.
The winds within each of the cubicles had so little mass that they couldn't really affect anything once released to the wider world. This time, however, whenever a barrier of a single cubicle would disperse, its winds would remain stuck in the middle of the greater shape they were contained within.
Leon continued to drop barrier after barrier at a speed that many of his peers would consider worse than reckless. And just like he wished for, the winds within the shape wouldn't disperse on their own, nor would they kill each other down.
Instead, all those winds would combine, forming an ever-growing tornado of raging winds.
It was this wind that would carry all the inner crystallization of mana back to the eye of the greater storm, forcing more and more of the inactive mana particles into a single, greater crystal.
"Lay down," Leon suddenly ordered, falling down to his knees. By this time, only around five outer layers of the greater shape remained. And those outer layers were the only thing that kept the powerful storm within from truly affecting the world.
Aware of what was about to transpire, Leon pressed his hands against the ground, using them as a support to lay completely flat himself. To his side, Sarah couldn't know what was about to happen, but she opted to obediently follow Leon's order anyway.
"In three, two, one..." Leon muttered as he dropped the last layers of the greater cubicle...
"Now!" he uttered, right as he dispersed the last of the barriers, allowing the raging storm contained inside upon the greater world around him.
ROAAAR!
The winds shoot in all directions. They killed off any local movements of air in a mere instant, spreading like a shockwave of a powerful explosion in all directions.
Thanks to the duo lying down, face first, on the ground, the shockwave simply washed over them, taking the path of the least resistance through the air around them.
Yet, it wasn't the winds that Leon was most interested in. They were nothing more than the side-effect of the process that finally reached its final stage.
Because now, contrary to when Leon operated on the tiny crystallized pieces of mana, they grew too big to disperse all on their own in a mere instant.
Instead, all those crystalized mana cores stuck together for but a moment.
And in that particular moment, Leon injected them with a single droplet of blood.
A droplet of blood that was bursting from all the active mana contained within.