'When exploring the forest, patience is the key.'
Leon took his time while moving through both the thick and thin areas of vegetation within the forest.
He wasn't some random newbie that would simply run around. It would make his task of finding out humans that were said to be somewhere within the woodlands shorter...
'But I don't have any reason to hurry, don't I?' Leon thought, with a small grin.
Rather than being a newbie, Leon's past gifted him with a lot of experience in regard to traversing the wildlands. Ever since the world's war against this master and dictator entered its latter stages, most of the dictator's enemies turned to guerilla warfare.
And as such, out of necessity, Leon had no other choice but to learn how to move around in a forest without attracting too much attention to himself.
'Follow the paths made by the wildlife, synchronize your movements with the natural flow of the forest, and always have at least three ways to escape,' Leon recounted some of the rules he came up with in his past.
The bloodmancer moved slowly through the woods... even despite constantly monitoring the state of his active mana that surrounded him.
In theory, he could rely on just a single factor. His experience alone was enough to grant him safe passage through the woods while his mana perception made it nigh impossible for any threat to approach him.
And yet, Leon continued to do his absolute best even if the situation didn't call for it.
'All it takes is a single strike to one's head to lose one's life. And no matter how well I can move through it,' Leon thought, leaping from one branch of a tree to another. He then took a moment to catch a breath and observe his surroundings. 'There is no telling what might await me in the dark.'
Zonk.
All of a sudden, Leon's entire attention moved to a very specific point in the forest, one that he could barely see through all the vegetation.
There was no movement that would indicate the presence of wildlife or humans. There were no regular shapes or angles that could indicate a trap either.
In fact, the point that drew Leon's attention was bright, way too bright to be placed there intentionally.
"A flower?" Leon muttered to himself, taken aback by his reaction to such a small detail. It was a small thing... but the bloodmancer still jumped from tree to tree to get closer, unwilling to just ignore his gut feeling.
"Ah," he then muttered as he landed by the flower and took a closer look at it. "So that's what it is."
Leon's voice sank.
This flower was nothing special. Just a single element of vegetation that made the forest what it was. Yet, at the same time, it wasn't.
'It's just like the primrose,' Leon thought, gritting his teeth when a memory as full of happiness as it was of sorrow resurfaced in his mind.
There was no saying whether this was exactly the same flower as the one that was imprinted in bloodmancer's memory or if it was just a look-alike. Yet, it didn't matter. Because whichever of the two it was, it effectively forced Leon to reminisce about the crush he had in the bright years of his former life.
'Alice...' Leon thought, gritting his teeth.
The face of a particular girl surfaced in his mind while a bout of pain squeezed his heart.
Leon closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath.
'This isn't the time to think about her,' he decided. Yet, then he went right against his own decision by reaching down and snapping the stem of the flower before securing it on his chest. 'The time for that will come later.'
Leon shook his head and looked around. If there was one principle that ruled all when it came to moving through the forest it was to keep one's directions organized.
And so, Leon took a moment to inspect a few nearby trees, using the simple method of judging which side of it had more moss growing on it to figure out where the north was.
'So this is where I should go,' Leon thought, raising his eyes in the direction the moss indicated.
Then, he brought his hand up and gently caressed the petals of the flower on his chest.
'You are a great person. And I can't wait to see what you will achieve.'
Alice's words sounded in Leon's mind. Her smiling and hopeful face appeared before his eyes.
And all of it was followed by the gruesome sight of her disfigured body when Leon got to see her again after entering the city he was enslaved to conquer.
'I will never atone for the things that I did,' Leon thought, taking one more deep breath to calm himself down. 'But I won't let them weigh me down anymore.'
Leon shook his head and looked around. And soon enough, he managed to find what he was looking for.
"Tracks," he muttered, dropping down to the ground and kneeling over the markings of some animal that went through the area sometime in the past.
A quick investigation later and Leon already mapped out the potential movements of the animal. And without further ado, he started to follow it.
'As long as the direction of the tracks matches north, they should be a good indicator of where I should go,' he thought, following the tracks for the next hour or so before stopping yet again.
The tracks turned weird. The calm and steady path that the animal took turned into a place of struggle. The bushes were all mangled, some of them completely broken and uprooted. The entire area of thick vegetation was flattened as if some massive best rolled on it to rub its back.
'No signs or smell of blood,' Leon noticed after ensuring his observation was correct. 'So it didn't fight but rushed to escape,' he thought, looking around only to notice a clear path that the escaping animal carved out in the forest vegetation.
'If it escaped in that direction,' Leon thought, turning himself one-eighty degrees and taking a moment to carefully observe the forest in the direction opposite to where the monster fled to.
"There it is," the bloodmancer then uttered while a small grin appeared on his lips.
Tracks that only a human could leave. And a human clearly not trained to move through the forest without making his presence known to everyone living in it.
The human tracks... were barely visible. Contrary to the monster, whoever stumbled upon this area didn't freak up. It was only Leon's experiences that allowed him to notice those tracks in the first place.
'But now that I know where you were,' he thought, raising his eyes and taking a moment to recognize the path that the human took here in the past, 'I should be able to follow where you came from!'