Leon's comment caused all the soldiers by the fire to turn silent.
They cut their former discussions and made no attempts to start a new one after receiving Leon's answer.
"You are damn right," one of the footmen then said. He then raised the mug he was playing with to his mouth before taking a hearty gulp of whatever was inside. "The forest is not a place for soldiers to wander to."
Leon threw a quick look at the soldier. His comment was quite interesting, even if it was something he only threw to diffuse the awkward silence.
'I guess they are not worried about some wild animals,' Leon thought, taking a mental note.
The bloodmancer pulled out the back of his shortened spear from the fire. The heat and the explosive chemical reaction smoldered the sharp part where he broke the handle in half.
But more importantly, it made it a lot easier to mold.
"I cannot agree enough with you," Leon said, taking it upon himself to pick up the conversation after the man's remark. "Skillset that a hunter need is vastly different from what a soldier should be capable of," he said.
Leon then blew some air on the smoldering butt of his weapon before wrapping his hand around it and rapidly rubbing it to even it out.
"That makes me wonder, why do I feel as if your commander was quite eager to recruit me?" Leon thought out loud. "Looking at your camp, I can tell that you do not lack men, not for a mercenary group of your size."
Despite all the appearances, Leon had no doubt about it.
Leynel's bannermen were no soldiers. At least, not soldiers in direct service to the local state.
They were mercenaries. Sellswords. A group of men putting their lives on the line to put food on their tables.
"You can never have enough men," another mercenary joined the discussion, raising the count of people who bothered to speak to a total of three. "The war is coming, everyone knows that. And the more capable men you can have, the greater the chances your group will survive."
The man finished his self-serving statement only to take a huge bite out of a chunk of roasted meat he was holding by its bone.
"I guess so," Leon muttered an offhanded response.
He pulled his hand away from the butt of his spear before giving it a proper look.
"That will work," he then whispered.
"You, vagrant!" As if by following some sort of heavenly clock, Bactrian appeared right the moment Leon was done with his prep. He held a short bow in one hand and a quiver stacked with arrows in the other.
The sub-officer then threw both of the items Leon's way. He didn't appear to care that a single miscalculation of his strength and the weapon would end up in the fire rather than Leon's hand.
"I guess it's time for me to go," Leon said, throwing Bactrian an annoyed look as he stood up from the circle around the fire.
"Safe hunting," the old soldier called, raising his cup in a cheer. "May you find what you are going to look for," he then added before sending Leon an eye.
'Does he know something?' Leon initially thought. Yet, before long, he decided to discard the idea.
And so, he thanked for the cheers with a slight nod of his head before picking himself up and moving up, following after Bactrian once more.
The two of them didn't walk for long. Despite the camp itself housing at the very least four to six hundred people, its centric-circular design, and the use of huge tents that could house entire units in a single one, it occupied only a small patch of land, relative to the number of people living in it.
"This is where I stay and where you go," Bactrian said as soon as the two of them moved as little as ten meters away from the outer layer of the tents.
They were so close, that Leon could see some of the watchmen serving their duty further down the plain than they were right now.
"I will be going, then," Leon said, rolling his eyes over the man's attitude. He then fixed his bow on the back and took a step forward.
"You better not come back without results," Bactrian added right as Leon was about to leave. "Not after taking my weapons," he added in a voice that he clearly wished to be threatening.
Yet, rather than acting scared, Leon stopped in his steps and turned around to reveal a small smile on his face.
A smile then turned into a smirk.
"Or what?" he asked, leaning his head over his shoulder while giving the sub-officer a look full of sympathy.
"..." Bactrian didn't respond. Instead, he stared Leon down for a moment only to then utter a short "Hmph!" before turning on his heel and heading back to the camp.
'This guy...' Leon rolled his eyes again, allowing his fake smile to wash off his face as he turned his sights back to the forest nearby.
The woodlands were about as far away from the camp as they were from the outermost buildings of the Gleenwood village. The farmlands that provided said village with jobs were all stacked to its southern and western sides, squeezed on the narrow patch of the plain between the forest and the steep, unhospitable hills further down south.
Leon took barely two minutes to reach the line of the trees. Then, he continued to walk for one more minute, all the way to the point where he could be certain the trees blocked the view of anyone who would be bored enough to track his movements.
'There has to be something in this forest that makes all those warriors be wary of it,' he thought, recalling the peculiarities surrounding his tasks.
The bloodmancer then weighted the short spear in his hand, taking a quick look at it only to then turn his eyes towards the massive trees that surrounded him.
With this kind of background and the darkness of the forest keeping whatever monsters resided in it away from Leon's eyes... His tiny blade appeared to be pretty underwhelming.
"I guess I found the use for it," he muttered to himself, bringing his spare hand to his stomach.
The warm feeling of the mana he refined was still there. And the mana itself constantly raged within the confines of his blood, as reactive as only pure energy could get.
'Worst case scenario, I will just refine another bit while deeper into the forest,' the bloodmancer decided.
Then, an excitement flashed through his eyes as he brought them down back to his primitive weapon.
'How much of magic engineering I can still remember, I wonder?'