'I guess she is going to stick around,' Leon thought when after several more moments, the girl have yet to leave the premises.
Instead of taking the hint and vacating the area, she sat down in the corner by the fireplace, happily munching on her food.
'Well, it's not like it matters in the end,' Leon decided before focusing on his current tasks at hand.
First came the recovery of his physical state. Due to how different the mana in this world was when compared to his previous life, Leon didn't dare to haphazardly venture into this field of expertise. That's why, rather than recklessly trying to mess with things he didn't fully understand, Leon opted to focus on the things he had control over.
Yet, for how important recovering his body was... There was only so much that Leon could do.
'I guess I don't have much of a choice,' he thought, gritting his teeth as he gathered his focus once again.
Performing the first step of mana purification was child's play. It was an exercise that students in Leon's original world learned before even studying the principles of magic. The problem lay in fact, that the first step of mana purification couldn't turn the mana in the air into a form Leon could use.
'I don't have the tools to go for the second step,' Leon realized after taking a quick look around.
It wouldn't take much. A pen, and a knife to open up his skin and dip some blood. A stick to draw on the ground and then just some peace so that Leon could focus.
And yet, bed-bound as he was right now, refining the mana in the air to its usable form was out of Leon's reach.
'For now, I guess I can only hope that this weak body of mine will at least hold until I find a way to properly fix it,' he thought, his eyes slowly closing as sleep started to creep up on him.
*Do you crave it?*
A silent, dark voice suddenly emerged from the depth of Leon's consciousness.
It felt foreign... yet weirdly right in its place at the same time. And after a single second has passed, Leon couldn't tell whether he actually heard something or if it was just a folly of his brain.
Leon's exhaustion and wounds finally caught up to him. And right when he found something that could be potentially useful... He fell into a slumber, burying the memory of the event into his sleeping wake.
"Huh?" Leon shook his head after what appeared to be just a short moment. Yet, as soon as he opened his eyes, he could tell that wasn't the case.
The fire burning in the middle of the front half of the house died off, leaving only some sparks and embers to light up the building. Sarah slept right by the dying fire, with nothing but some sheets to serve as her bedding.
'Poor girl,' Leon thought, sitting at the edge of the bed. He then closed his eyes, not to go back to sleep, but to focus and inspect his internal state.
Most of his open wounds have now closed down. The muscle tissue has yet to fully connect and merge, making it unwise for Leon to put any great strain on his body right now. Thankfully, though, he was now good enough to stand up and move around.
'I doubt I will find a better time to try refining this damned mana,' Leon thought, standing up and grabbing the sheet that Sarah covered him with. He walked through the house, only to throw the covers on top of the shivering girl, coating her with the warmth of his own body that still stuck around the sheet. 'Now then,' he thought, turning his eyes towards the doors.
Leon walked past the girl and then towards the doors. Yet, before moving out into the open, he slammed the palm of his hand across the edge of some box, promptly making a long, thin cut along his palm. Only then did he push the doors open and left for the outside.
The village was asleep.
The tragic events of the night combined with the fire were exciting as well as they were exhausting. Deprived of most of its men, the villagers took most of the night to quell the fires and roughly clean the area from the scars of the battle. And now, with the sun ready to rise at any moment, they were all sound asleep, recovering their strength before another day of hard toil.
'Perfect,' Leon thought, sweeping his gaze across the settlement only to turn and walk around his temporary house perimeter. He only settled once the building blocked the view of the rest of the village, giving Leon some peace of mind.
And then, he got to work.
First, he found some random stick. Then, he used it to carve thin markings directly on the ground.
'Runomancy was never my greatest subject but that should be good enough,' he thought once he completed a small arcane.
It was a simple marking consisting of seven anchoring runes and seven refining runes. With all fourteen of them arranged into a circle, Leon marked a condensing rune in the middle before connecting all the runes and turning them into a single, complex marking.
"Let's begin," Leon whispered to himself before putting his own energy into action.
The task wasn't complicated at all. In fact, Leon continued to do it over and over again before falling asleep. The only difference was, that this time, he created seven different blocks of air at once.
'First, stir them up,' he thought, infusing intent into all seven of his barriers.
The air enclosed within the cubes started to spin. These secluded winds continued to accelerate only to reach the point where the wind's particles started to shed their mana counterparts.
A single drop of sweat trickled down Leon's forehead.
Even if the task didn't take a toll on his already limited supply of mana, it surely did leave its mark on his mental state. After all, simultaneously casting seven different magic crafts was something used in the climax of a battle. Meanwhile, Leon used this godlike ability... just to speed up the process so that there would be a lesser chance of someone spotting him.
'And now, for the second step,' he thought, keeping his focus while raising his wounded hand over the arcana.
And then, a single drop fell upon the ground markings, splattering all over it and covering it with a thick intent of Leon's origin.
POOF!
All seven of Leon's barriers fell apart, releasing their crystallized grains of mana into their respective refining runes.
The energy of Leon's blood run amok through the pathways he engraved into the ground. And once it swirled in a certain way within the rune, the grains of mana suddenly found themselves subjected to an onslaught of extreme influences.
The grains of crystalized mana was held up together just by centripetal force. Once this force would vanish, the crystals would fall apart, returning to their usual form of scattered particles.
And then, the refining rune properly activated, putting those grains of crystalized mana into a state not far from the human imagination of hell.
Subject to extreme temperature and pressure, the deactivated crystalline particles started to melt, properly bonding with each other.
Another droplet of blood fell down Leon's face.
All at once, he had to perfectly micromanage the flows of energy within the arcana so that the conditions within each of the runes would be perfect.
'Now!'
Led by nothing but his instinct, Leon activated the blood that sank all over the central rune. And with the pathways leading towards the condensing rune now open, the grains of mana finally found a way out of the extreme environments of their respective runes.
All seven of the melted grains of crystalized mana surged toward a singular point. And all seven of them crashed into each other, turning the conditions within the condensing rune a notch worse than they were within the refining ones.
But that small difference was just what Leon aimed at.
POOF!
The ground on which Leon engraved the condensing rune suddenly turned black as if an invisible fireball scorched it. The lines that connected the runes ruptured making it seems as if a small-scale earthquake breezed through the village.
The runes at the outer edge of the ring were left in the best shape, only slightly affected by the full activation of the arcana.
But it all didn't matter.
Because right in the middle of the burned-out arcana, Leon could see a small grain of highly-reflective object. It floated just a few inches above the ground, peacefully reflecting the early rays of the morning sun.
"It's not much," Leon muttered, reaching out and enclosing his fingers around the small crystal. "But it's an honest work," he finished one of the legendary quotes of his old world.
He then tightened his fist, shattering the crystalized mana into myriad pieces with a single surge of his own energy.
All in all, Leon expanded a single drop of blood worth of his power. And once the crushed dust of the activated mana immersed itself into the flesh of Leon's fist, he regained nearly a hundred times more energy than he spent to make it happen!
"Mornin..." Sarah muttered as she suddenly walked out from beyond the corner. And just like several hours ago, Leon failed to take notice of her before she herself made her presence known.
The girl rubbed her sleepy eyes only to raise them and look at Leon's elated face. She then brought her eyes down at the strange markings he left on the ground below his feet.
"Are you okay, sir?" Sarah asked, raising her fearful face as she did.
"Yeah, all is fine," Leon replied, turning his absent-minded eyes toward the brightening sky. 'It was a trash-tier arcana but it worked so well,' he thought, closing his eyes while he allowed his face to bask in the early rays of the rising sun.
Leon's arrival in this world wasn't pleasant. The chain of events that followed didn't fill him with enthusiasm toward his new life either.
But now that Leon found a way to restore his strength, the burden on his shoulders somewhat lessened.
'Maybe this isn't really all that bad place to start anew?' Leon thought, allowing his lips to form a tiny, hopeful smile.
*Do you really believe that in this world, your past will remain buried?*